Intimate Loops
Even still, we make only small circuits, but in tracing and retracing the same compressed routines in their close relationships, homes and immediate environments, these Illustration graduates find new territory. And they deploy drawing to do it: that mysterious loop between hand, eye and mind that, combined with animation (a recurring process of drawing and redrawing), aptly translates a year defined by repetition.
For some, forced home-based introspection has stretched the mundane into the surreal, resulting in nightmarish anarchic scenes, fanciful domestic speculation and hallucinatory self-actualisation. Interpersonal relationships are re-evaluated too, with misaligned ideals tenderly apparent under scrutiny.
The outside world is also changed. Intensive focus on the local and the everyday creates, in some cases, a claustrophobic continuum of the ordinary, in others absurdist reimaginings of the urban streetscape.
These illustrated testimonies, whether disorienting, humorous or seductive, have their roots in a reality experienced by all: they both deeply personal and vital common escape hatches.
Olivia Ahmad
Olivia Ahmad is a UK-based curator and editor specialising in graphic arts. She trained as a curator of craft and design on the Museums Association’s Diversify programme.
From 2010-2014 she was exhibition curator at the Northern Design Festival. Since 2014, she has worked at House of Illustration in London, where she is Artistic Director. Her recent work has included exhibitions on socialist graphic design from Soviet Russia, Cuba and the DPRK, London’s first exhibition of work by queer icon Tom of Finland and developing the UK’s only dedicated residency for illustrators.
From 2010-2014 she was exhibition curator at the Northern Design Festival. Since 2014, she has worked at House of Illustration in London, where she is Artistic Director. Her recent work has included exhibitions on socialist graphic design from Soviet Russia, Cuba and the DPRK, London’s first exhibition of work by queer icon Tom of Finland and developing the UK’s only dedicated residency for illustrators.
